Demobilization

The World War brought to America a new and enlightened discernment of the Government’s responsibility toward the men whom it had called to the uniform. In former wars the military hierarchies had, in effect, regarded the individual soldier as a piece of cannon bait; and when he was no longer able to serve this purpose, they were done with him. In the World War the attitude of the Government toward its four million soldiers was much less impersonal, much more paternalistic. Its first solicitude was, to be sure, the soldier’s expertness as a soldier, but after that came a real and helpful regard for his physical, mental, moral, and economic well-being.

Particularly was this true after the armistice. Before that day the various welfare activities conducted by the Army and its auxiliaries had been mainly directed to the end that the soldier might be made physically and morally fit as a fighter. After the armistice the undertakings in soldier welfare began looking to the time when the troops would resume their places in the workaday world once more.

When the fighting stopped, the American Expeditionary Forces faced a long interval which was bound to elapse before the shipping of the United States could possibly repatriate the two million Americans in France. This might easily have been a period of stagnation for the temporary exiles. Those in command, however, seized the opportunity to establish within the A. E. F. a vast school system. Wherever American soldiers were quartered in any numbers, classes were organized and instruction proceeded, the curriculum including practically the entire range of subjects taught in the public schools of the United States, from the three elementary R’s to the Latin and algebra of the high schools. Those who desired it could receive instruction in trade and business subjects. As an auxiliary to this system the Young Men’s Christian Association conducted at its huts courses similar to those given by that organization in its buildings in this country. A surprising amount of illiteracy was discovered among the troops raised in 1917 and 1918, foreign-born soldiers being classed as illiterates if they could not read and write the English language, even though they might be proficient in reading and writing their own. It is estimated that, during this period when the expedition was waiting for the ships to take it home, 100,000 men of the A. E. F. were taught to read and write English.

The public school system of the A. E. F., to call it that, was rounded out by a great soldiers’ university established after the armistice at Beaune. In the ranks of the expedition were thousands of young men who, in order to join the Army, had interrupted their studies in colleges and other institutions of higher education in America. For these and for others to whom it was practicable to give such training, the General Headquarters of the expedition organized the A. E. F. University, occupying French army barracks, schools, and other public and private buildings at the town of Beaune. A large faculty was recruited almost entirely from the men in uniform, although a few college professors came from the United States to assist in the work. The faculty organized a curriculum which in scope would do credit to any large university in the United States. About 10,000 soldiers registered as students. Distinctions of rank ended at the classroom doors, and it was not uncommon to see private soldiers conducting classes in which sat officers of as high rank as lieutenant colonel. The university’s brief career ended with the advent of the summer of 1919. Colonel Ira L. Reeves was president of the university.

Besides these educational advantages, the A. E. F. arranged for scholarships for some of its men at various French and English universities. Practically every university in France, including the Sorbonne, admitted designated A. E. F. soldiers to its classes during that winter and spring, as did also Oxford and other famous educational institutions in England. Brigadier General Robert I. Rees was in charge of all educational activities of the A. E. F.

Yet it was not all study and work and no play for the men of the A. E. F. during the waiting time after the armistice. Athletics were organized on a tremendous scale. Near Paris the expedition established a great athletic field, called the Pershing Stadium. There, in the spring of 1919, were held the military athletic championship contests, to which the British, French, and other armies of the Allies sent their competing teams. Military drilling after the armistice became competitive in spirit, and out of such competition came the crack drill regiment of the Third Army Corps, known as “Pershing’s Own Regiment,” which paraded with the First Division in New York and Washington in September, 1919. The drill regiment was organized and trained by Colonel Conrad S. Babcock. Nearly every division in France conducted a horse show after the armistice. The expedition numbered among its members men of high talent in almost all callings, including that of the stage. At Tours the A. E. F. organized an expert theatrical producing company, the performances of which equaled in merit the productions seen on the American stage. This central troupe also conducted a training school for amateur actors of the expedition. The various areas in which the American soldiers were concentrated sent their local Thespians to Tours for training, after which they returned to their stations to organize and produce plays. It was a small community indeed which did not have its theatrical performances at regular intervals. The taste of producers and audiences alike ran strongly to musical comedies.

There was nothing which contributed more to the welfare of the men of the American Expeditionary Forces, or to their spirit and morale, than the Stars and Stripes, the service newspaper of the A. E. F. This unique adjunct to a modern army originated in the ranks, was written, edited, and published by men from the ranks, and to the end of its famous existence was primarily and always the organ of the enlisted man, with the enlisted man’s point of view. No other army in Europe possessed an expeditionary newspaper, but it is unlikely that any great American army of the future will ever be without one. The value of the Stars and Stripes was beyond dispute.

Three men—Private Hudson Hawley, Field Clerk James A. Britt, and Corporal John T. Winterich—were the founders of the Stars and Stripes. All three had had training in the making of newspapers—Winterich had been one of the editors of the Springfield Republican. At Neufchâteau one winter night early in 1918 these three foregathered to descant upon the growing American Expeditionary Forces and—like the fraternity of reporters the world over—to talk shop; and these men agreed that the chief need of the expedition was an agency which might put the various American military elements in France in touch with each other, tell every man what the expanding force was like and what it was trying to do, and build homogeneity and singleness of purpose within the expedition such as no other agency could evoke—in short, the A. E. F. needed a newspaper. The idea was communicated to General Pershing, who promptly approved it. Thus was the Stars and Stripes officially born.

The first number was published in Paris on February 8, 1918, and regularly every Friday thereafter the paper appeared until June 13, 1919, when it was discontinued, and the editorial staff joined the homeward migration. At its summit of popularity the Stars and Stripes attained to a circulation of 526,000, which was close to the permitted limit of one copy for every three soldiers in the expedition, a stricture made necessary by the shortage of paper in Europe. This was all paid circulation, obtained without direct solicitation other than the advertising appearing in the paper itself. The Stars and Stripes was printed in the Paris plant of the London Daily Mail. The total net profit earned by the newspaper was about $700,000, a sum which went to the credit of the Quartermaster Department. After the armistice the collectors in America awoke to the historical value of this publication and offered large sums for the few complete files which had been saved.

At about the third issue of the Stars and Stripes Private Harold W. Ross, who had had an extensive experience as an executive in newspaper offices of the Pacific coast, became the editor-in-chief. The three originators of the newspaper were on its staff until the end. Sergeant Alexander Woollcott, who before and after his army experience was the dramatic critic of the New York Times, became the battle correspondent of the paper. His accounts of the engagements in which the American troops appeared were not excelled by those of any correspondent with the Army. After the armistice Sergeant John W. Rixey Smith joined the staff. These names all became well known to the men of the A. E. F. Nor should the two artists, C. LeRoy Baldridge and A. B. Wallgren, both private soldiers, be forgotten. Their work on the Stars and Stripes resulted in fame and fortune for both of them. The latter, as “Wally,” made himself, with his whimsical nonsense, about the most popular figure in the American Expeditionary Forces. Baldridge was the possessor of a delicate and subtle talent. Practically unknown in his own country before the war, he returned after it to take his place among the foremost American illustrators.

These and other men connected with the publication were formally organized as a unit of the A. E. F., bearing the name 1st Censor and Press Company. The officers in charge were Major Mark Watson and Captain Stephen T. Early, both of them experienced in newspaper work.

The military authorities granted an extraordinary editorial freedom to the Stars and Stripes. At one time the paper was making a satirical onslaught against the army practice of fencing off the rank and file from the more desirable cafés and other gathering places with the placard “Officers Only.” A high general of the expedition took umbrage at this campaign and sent to the publication office a peremptory order for the attack to cease. The editorial staff at once appealed to General Pershing, who replied with a written order that there was to be no interference with the editorial direction of the Stars and Stripes. With such a charter the Stars and Stripes threw itself whole-heartedly into various projects for the good of the A. E. F. and its personnel. Its chief military contribution was its “Berlin or Bust” campaign, undertaken in the summer and autumn of 1918. In this it directed its energies chiefly to the improvement of the unloading efficiency at the American ports in France. By citing publicly the labor units which made good records in the unloading of vessels, the newspaper created, among the stevedore troops, a spirit of competition which had a marked effect upon the efficiency of the ports. The newspaper induced American troop units in France to “adopt” for one year more than 3,000 orphans of deceased French soldiers, and many of the units continued their guardianship after they returned to America. In this campaign the Stars and Stripes raised over 500,000 francs for the care of French war orphans, and most of this money was contributed by men in the trenches. The newspaper also conducted a service department in which it answered more than 500,000 enquiries coming from American soldiers. After the armistice it coöperated in the expedition’s educational enterprise.

In this volume, however, we are not so much interested in welfare activities within the Army as we are with those which bore directly upon the difficult business of demobilizing the troops without shock to the economic organization of the country. The activities in soldier welfare directly connected with demobilization were of two classes—those benefiting the sick and wounded and those helpful to the able-bodied.

To the officers and enlisted men of the Medical Corps in this country the armistice meant only an increase of work. Therefore, in common with the other military departments the personnel of which after the armistice could see no immediate prospects of discharge, the Medical Department experienced a sharp drop in corps morale. Many of the officers and enlisted men attempted to get out at once, and some of them succeeded, but for the most part they were held in uniform; and later, when the men realized how badly their services were needed and what good they were accomplishing, they became contented and worked with good spirit until the corps could be placed on its permanent peace footing.

While the Army was expanding, the most noticeable work of the Medical Corps in this country had been that of examining the men who sought entrance to the training camps, sorting out the physically fit from the unfit. The care of military patients did not become a predominant medical activity in the United States until the late summer of 1918, when, simultaneously, the A. E. F. began sending home its first shiploads of wounded men and the influenza epidemic invaded the training camps. Meanwhile the care of war’s disabled had taken on a new meaning for the American military medical authorities. In former wars, as soon as a sick man or a wounded man had gained strength enough to travel, he was usually furloughed to his home, there to win his own way back to health if he could. In the summer of 1918 the War Department adopted the policy of not discharging disabled men from the Service until they were as nearly rehabilitated physically as medical science could make them; and even then a patient was not turned adrift, but might seek the services of other governmental agencies for specialized treatment and for reëducation that should enable him to take a place in civilian life at least as useful as the one he had left in order to join the military service. This policy had a marked effect upon the layout of the machinery which conducted the demobilization of the Army. It not only resulted in maintaining the Medical Corps, equipment and personnel, at war strength for many months after the armistice, but it also set up within the Government great new agencies for carrying out the Government’s beneficent purposes toward the ex-service men.

On the day of the armistice there were 200,000 patients in the A. E. F. hospitals in France. It was at once realized that the best interests of these men demanded their prompt return to the United States; for nowhere else could they secure the treatment most certain to restore them to complete health. The Medical Corps at home was ready for them. For months it had been constructing throughout the United States a great chain of specialized hospitals in anticipation of a heavy American casualty list in France.

Many of the 200,000 hospitalized members of the A. E. F. recovered in time to recross the ocean as members of regular military units, but more than half of them returned as patients needing more or less extended treatment in the military hospitals in this country. The policy in France was to move these men either in ambulances or in hospital trains from the interior hospitals up to hospitals near the ports of embarkation. There they were placed aboard the special hospital ships or given accommodations on the regular transports. Practically all of them debarked either at New York or at Newport News. New York could accommodate 24,000 patients at once in its regular and special debarkation hospitals. The two regular debarkation hospitals in New York—one located in the Greenhut Building and the other in the Grand Central Palace—each had beds for over 3,000 patients, and in addition the Army could call upon thirteen additional hospitals in New York in an emergency. At Newport News there was a regular and emergency equipment of 10,000 hospital beds for incoming overseas patients.

Harbor hospital boats and ambulances distributed the patients from the ships to the debarkation hospitals. There they were classified according to the sort of treatment they required. There were eighty interior hospitals which received overseas patients. The policy of the Army was to send patients whenever practicable to the hospitals nearest their homes. In the distribution of patients from the ports to the interior hospitals, the Medical Corps operated four hospital trains—three out of Hoboken and one out of Newport News—and twenty unit cars, one of which, attached to a train of regular Pullman or tourist sleepers, enabled such a train to serve as a moving hospital. Each of the regular hospital trains was made up of seven hospital cars, and carried comfortably 141 patients and 31 doctors, nurses, and orderlies. The unit cars were equipped with diet kitchens, in which could be cooked food enough for 250 patients. With this equipment 139,000 overseas patients were handled up to the end of the year 1919, and of these, 103,000 entered the country through the port of New York. On the first anniversary of the armistice thirty-six of the eighty general hospitals had been closed, an indication of the rate of convalescence among the military patients.

In its treatment of patients in the military hospitals, the Medical Department of the Army went beyond the realm of pure surgery and medication in order to reconstruct physically and mentally, when necessary, the men left disabled by the war. To this end it enlarged its Sanitary Corps to include persons skilled in physical and occupational reconstruction. The plan permitted the employment by the Corps of civilian women, who, after putting on the distinctive blue uniform adopted for them, were known as reconstruction aides. These women were skilled in two branches of therapy—occupational therapy (the teaching of new occupations to invalids as a curative measure) and physiotherapy (including baths of various sorts, massage, heat and electric treatments, and gymnastics). Most of the general hospitals were fitted with workshops, gymnasiums, physiotherapy departments, and educational buildings. An elementary school system was inaugurated at the general hospitals, and several thousand illiterate patients were taught to read and write during their convalescence. Organized recreational activities were conducted at each general hospital engaging in reconstruction. Outdoor games, setting-up exercises and other gymnastic exercises, military drills, and organized play of many sorts vied with concerts, plays, boxing matches, and other amusements for the interest of the convalescents. One important work of the physiotherapists was to teach men with amputated limbs how to dress, feed, and otherwise care for themselves, and how to use the artificial legs or arms which the Government supplied to them. Nineteen former training camps were converted into convalescent centers operated by the Medical Department. To these places the general hospitals sent 50,000 convalescent soldiers to be finally hardened by curative work and play for their reëntrance into civilian life.

After patients were finally discharged from the Army and from the army hospitals, the Government by no means washed its hands of them. Congress had set up three great new federal agencies looking to the welfare of the discharged soldier. One of these was the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, which, in addition to offering low-priced life insurance policies of the standard sorts to all ex-service men, determined, granted, and paid the monthly allowances given by the Government to all Americans disabled by service in the uniform during the World War. Then, too, Congress had greatly enlarged the function of the old Public Health Service by making it responsible for the medical care of all ex-service men discharged from the Army or Navy and from the military hospitals but still needing attention on account of disabilities incurred during the war. Finally, Congress established by law the Federal Board for Vocational Education, an act which outdid in gratitude and generosity anything which the American Government had ever before offered to disabled war veterans.

After the Public Health Service began expanding its facilities for the care of disabled veterans, the Medical Department adopted the policy of discharging its patients rapidly and turning them over to the Public Health Service. Not only were those two classes of war victims requiring extended medical treatment—the mental and nervous cases and those suffering with tuberculosis—so treated, but men still suffering from wounds and sometimes requiring major operations and long periods for convalescence thereafter were released from the Army and committed to the ministrations of the Public Health Service. The immediate result of such a transfer was to entitle the disabled soldier to receive from the Government his disability allowance, which could be paid only after a man’s discharge from the military service, and it often allowed him to secure medical care in the vicinity of his own home. Another important result was that, during 1920, although thousands of the victims of the war still required constant medical attention, the Medical Service of the Army rapidly contracted toward its prewar proportions, with a consequent expansion of the branch of the Public Health Service which dealt with disabled veterans.

There was not nearly so much tuberculosis in the Army as the medical authorities had anticipated. In the expectation of a wide prevalence of the disease resulting from the severity of field conditions in France, the Medical Corps established nine tuberculosis hospitals in the United States. Afterwards, although 100,000 of the 4,000,000 men were sent to hospitals as tuberculosis suspects, the positive diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis was confirmed in less than 15,000 cases. The result was that at no time did the Army use more than seven of its tuberculosis hospitals, and after it adopted the policy of discharging tubercular patients on certificates of disability it maintained only two of these hospitals. Discontent and homesickness are deterrents to the cure of tuberculosis, and the Medical Corps generally allowed sufferers from the disease to continue their own cures at home under instructions or to enter the hospitals and sanitariums of the Public Health Service near their own homes.

The other class of disabled ex-service men in need of extended medical treatment were the nervous and mental cases. Such victims were turned over to the Public Health Service, and they constituted the largest class of cases treated by that agency after the armistice.

After a disabled man was discharged from the Service, he automatically became eligible for vocational rehabilitation under the direction of the Federal Board for Vocational Education. The only four conditions were that the man must have been honorably discharged after April 7, 1917, that he must have a disability incurred in, aggravated by, or traceable to, the military service, that the disability must be, in the opinion of the Federal Board, an actual vocational handicap to him, and, lastly, that vocational training was a feasible thing for him. In other words—to clarify the final condition—the Vocational Board would not give training to a lunatic or give training of any sort beyond a man’s mental capabilities. Within these necessary restrictions, however, there was practically no limit to which the Federal Board could not go. Most of its beneficiaries, to be sure, received training in the purely mechanical vocations in shops and factories; but the Board could and did send men to colleges and even to the postgraduate schools of universities. The objective of the Board was not only to overcome by training the man’s physical handicap, but also to carry him forward in training as long as his progress and his mentality warranted it. More than one war veteran found that his disability brought to him educational opportunities which might otherwise never have come his way. The Board possessed funds to pay not only for tuition, textbooks, and incidental expenses, but also for the maintenance of the student and his family, if he had one, while he was in training. According to the number of persons dependent upon the student, the Board was authorized to pay for maintenance as much as $150 a month. At first the disabled men were slow to make application for vocational training; but, once they understood the advantages which were theirs for the asking, there was a great rush to avail themselves of the opportunities thus freely offered by the Government.

The three rehabilitation services, though interdependent in their operation, were independent of each other in their management and control. The Public Health Service conducted the physical examinations on which the War Risk Bureau rated men for their disability allowances. The War Risk Bureau certified men to the Public Health Service for medical treatment, and for vocational training to the Federal Board for Vocational Education. A man could not legally receive his disability allowance from the War Risk Bureau while receiving a training maintenance allowance from the Federal Board. While in effect, therefore, conducting three branches in the single main enterprise of caring for the men left disabled by the war, the three federal agencies were independent in their executive managements. This anomalous arrangement resulted in such distressing delays and stirred up so much discontent among the ex-service men that in the spring of 1921, upon the insistence largely of the American Legion, the veterans’ own organization, the three services were brought together under a single direction.

The agitation which led to the amalgamation of the three welfare services undoubtedly created a wide impression that the Government had neglected the ex-service men. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. The complaint was not against the generosity of the Government, but against the method of administering that generosity. It was often difficult for the ex-service man to obtain the benefits which Congress had provided for him. The lavishness of the hand of Congress is shown by the fact that up to the present (June, 1921) its appropriations of money for ex-service men have amounted in sum to about $800,000,000. This is more money than the Government provided for veterans of the Civil War during the first thirty years after the conclusion of that conflict. The appropriations to date include the money for the physical and vocational rehabilitation of disabled World War veterans, for death claims paid by the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, and for allowances paid by the War Risk Bureau to disabled ex-soldiers, but they do not include the sixty-dollar bonus paid to all ex-service men in 1919. This bonus accounted for about $200,000,000 of the Government’s money. Altogether, therefore, the Government has either paid out or obligated itself to pay out about one billion dollars for the benefit of men who served in the American forces during the World War.

So much for the post-armistice care of the wounded and otherwise disabled. The other principal phase of welfare work for the Army after the armistice had to do with the able-bodied soldiers; and, concretely, it meant getting jobs for them. The War Department did not regard a soldier as completely demobilized until he was once more placed in an occupation in civilian life. The Department could exercise no authority over the veteran once he had received his discharge, but it could and did exercise a friendly solicitude as to his economic future. Therefore the War Department led a nation-wide movement under the slogan, “Jobs for Soldiers”—and that meant jobs for approximately 4,000,000 men thrown suddenly into the labor market just at the time when industry was going through the critical transition from war to peace.

In demobilizing the men of the Army, the War Department adopted a policy the diametric opposite of the British policy of discharging soldiers by trades as they were needed in industry. With our enormous and varied industry, we had everything in our favor to make a success of the industrial plan of troop demobilization; but, nevertheless, the War Department settled upon the questionable policy of discharging the troops by military units, regardless of the effect such a policy might have upon general industrial conditions. As it was, the United States faced an economic crisis in the transition of its war industry, and to inundate the country with unemployed ex-soldiers was only to add to the difficulties of those who were trying to bring industry safely through the readjustment. Later on, the War Department modified its policy by providing that any soldier who faced unemployment after discharge might, upon his own request, be held in the service for a reasonable time while he tried to locate a job for himself in civilian life, and that, on the other hand, if work were waiting for any man not yet in line for immediate discharge, such a man might, upon submitting proper proof that there was a civilian demand for his services, receive his discharge forthwith. The Department permitted officers to take thirty-day leaves of absence with pay while they sought work.

There was, of course, danger that the wholesale outpouring of ex-soldiers upon an industrial field already complaining of a labor surplus would precipitate a business crisis; yet it seemed certain that a wise guidance of the internal affairs of the nation could avert such a calamity. The world was short of almost everything which man consumes, and it seemed evident that it would take several years of brisk production in every field to build up the reserves wasted by war and overtake industrially the demands of the consuming public. It was evident, in short, that there was plenty of work for all, if business did not become hysterical in the face of a difficult transition. The part for the Government to play was to conduct a skillful graduation of war industry into the pursuits of peace and at the same time to take the lead with its own agencies in infiltrating the demobilized troops into the ranks of trade and industry.

Fortunately, for this latter purpose, the Government possessed an agency at hand—the United States Employment Service, a branch of the Department of Labor. The war had built up this organization to great size and usefulness. Its branches covered the United States. Before the armistice it had been instrumental in staffing some of the more important war industrial establishments, particularly the new shipyards and the government powder plants. This agency would have been competent alone to secure employment for all discharged soldiers, but for the circumstance that, in the spring of 1919, there came into office a Congress of a political complexion the opposite to that of the administration. This Congress at once adopted a program of economy, but it was a spurious economy to the extent (which was considerable) that it arbitrarily cut down appropriations needed for important projects. The United States Employment Service received a scant $5,000,000 with which to finance the work of securing civilian employment for 4,000,000 men, when twice that sum would not have been overabundant. The result was that in this final scene of the war the Government was forced to call upon outside and volunteer aid in the conduct of an essential war activity.

At this point the semi-governmental Council of National Defense stepped into the breach. Shorn of most of its purely industrial functions, the Council of National Defense had become largely an organ consolidating and directing all volunteer civilian effort in aid of the Government in its war and demobilization problems. It had built up a field service covering the entire United States, consisting principally of the state and local councils of national defense. Meanwhile, with the expansion of the United States Employment Service restricted by lack of money, the Secretary of War made plans to use some of the emergency war funds in the soldier-employment project and called to Washington Colonel Arthur Woods, the former police commissioner of New York City, making him an assistant to the Secretary of War in charge of all war department activities in reëstablishing service men in civil life. The Director of the Council of National Defense created, in March, 1919, its emergency committee on employment of soldiers and sailors, with Colonel Woods as chairman. The membership of the committee linked up the United States Employment Service and other interested governmental bodies in an emergency organization for Colonel Woods to command. The committee also tied in all state and municipal employment agencies, welfare societies everywhere that were taking part in the solution of the employment problem, and also the thousands of community councils of national defense. Thus was evolved in brief time a fairly efficient employment service of national scope.

The success of the project was beyond question. The so-called bureaus for discharged soldiers, sailors, and marines were set up in practically every community in the United States. Since the work was so largely voluntary work, no strict system of reports was ever put in force, but the figures from 500 principal American cities and towns showed that when the year 1919 ended, 1,326,000 discharged service men had applied to the employment agencies, and more than 927,000 had been placed in jobs by the organization. A general survey in the autumn of 1919 disclosed only about 20,000 ex-service men out of work.

The men of the A. E. F. came in contact with the Government’s employment organization before they left foreign soil. The United States Employment Service sent several representatives to France soon after the armistice. These advance agents carried cards, which were distributed to the troops of the expedition as they came to the embarkation ports in France. With the cards went the Government’s assurance that it would use every effort to restore every soldier to a useful place in civil life. Any soldier who desired to avail himself of these good offices was instructed to fill in a card during his voyage home, telling his qualifications, what sort of job he desired, and where he wished to be employed. Hundreds of thousands of these cards were collected by the federal employment agents at the ports of debarkation in this country. The cards were sorted and sent to the proper local employment bureaus throughout the United States. Thousands of men were engaged for work before they received their discharges. The fact that jobs were waiting for them undoubtedly helped to avert the congregating of idle service men in cities after they had been turned off at the demobilization centers.

The overseas soldier had been serving his country for a dollar a day while others had stayed at home in bomb-proof jobs and drawn the highest wages ever paid in America. The returning veteran often felt, and felt justly, that it was his turn now to reap some of the financial rewards. Travel had broadened these boys; the harsh experiences of war had sobered them and often quickened their ambition. Such men were not content to go back to the jobs they had left in 1917 and 1918. They demanded something better, and often they got it, because employers were prone to accept their point of view. Events justified this attitude, too, as was testified to in hundreds of letters received by the employment bureaus from satisfied employers, who wrote that the demobilized soldiers were better and more ambitious workmen for their war experiences.

The success of the reëmployment campaign was largely an achievement for publicity. The publicity was directed both to the soldier and to the employer. For reaching the soldier one of the most valuable devices proved to be a booklet entitled Where Do We Go from Here?, written by Major William Brown Meloney. This pamphlet was filled with good advice for the demobilized soldier. It took into account his stirred ambition, but showed how impossible it was for every man to get the place in civil life he desired, and therefore urged each man to take what job he could get and make the most of it. The War Camp Community Service printed and distributed 3,000,000 copies of this booklet.

The American Red Cross sponsored a poster by Dan Smith, the artist, bearing to employers the slogan: “Put Fighting Blood in your Business!” A file of helmeted Yanks obliquely below a shield on which were inscribed the names of the principal engagements in which the A. E. F. participated; below that, the lines: “Here’s his record. Does he get a job?”—such was the display.

Publications of every sort, motion picture theatres, ministers in their pulpits, and school-teachers in their classrooms joined in the effort to make the whole United States think of its obligations to the returning troops. The War Department conferred a so-called citation upon employers who agreed to take back all of their former employees who had joined the Army or Navy. The leading business organizations of the country worked with their members to secure a complete reëmployment of former service men. The thoroughness of the effort accounts for the large degree of its success.

At the same time the War Department constituted itself an employment agency for placing soldiers with technical training in the best positions that could be obtained for them. Such soldiers were usually commissioned officers. The Department asked these men to send to Washington statements of their qualifications and their wishes as to employment. The Department then circularized some 25,000 business firms of the United States as to their needs for men with technical training. By this method about 8,000 men were placed in responsible positions at good salaries.

The employment organization encountered and overcame an abuse of the army uniform that was particularly flagrant for the first few months after the armistice. On the streets of most large cities were men in uniform, wearing the red chevron indicating their honorable discharge from the service, selling cheap or worthless articles or begging outright. There may have been a shadow of excuse for this during the early weeks of the winter of 1918–1919; but as industry recovered and revived it became possible for every ex-service man who desired a respectable job to secure one. Street solicitation, however, was highly profitable, and many professional beggars and sharpers, who had never been in the Service at all, secured uniforms and posed as discharged soldiers. The American Legion instituted a campaign against these men, urging the public not to give money to them. The reëmployment forces persuaded local authorities to refuse peddling licenses to men in uniform. Thus the evil was largely stamped out after a few months.

Not even the assurance of an immediate job and the other official inducements which made the road home the path of least resistance could always induce the discharged soldier to go home directly, particularly if he left the demobilization camp with his pockets full of money. Around some of the demobilization centers ranged bands of thieves and outlaws who, having evaded military service, now during the demobilization wore the army uniform and posed as discharged soldiers in order to prey upon the ex-service men. If a soldier leaving the camp listened to their fraternal “Hello, Buddy!” and fell in with them, he usually later found himself fleeced to his last penny. To offset this evil the American Red Cross established a chain of soldiers’ banks at the principal demobilization centers. In these banks the discharged men could deposit their money, drawing it out by check after they reached their homes. The deposits in the camp banks passed $4,000,000 in amount.

In one respect only was the reëmployment campaign unsuccessful. The War Department had hoped to use the demobilization of troops as an offset to some extent to the steady drift of population from American farms to the cities. In pursuance of this ambition the Government distributed among the troops at the demobilization centers nearly 1,000,000 copies of a booklet entitled Forward to the Farm! Why Not? Yet, although most country boys in the Army were willing to return to the farms, the Government could not induce the city dwellers to take up country life. However, it is noteworthy that in June, 1919, when the Kansas wheat crop was in danger for want of labor to harvest it, the reëmployment organization was able to send nearly 50,000 ex-service men into the Kansas wheat country during the harvest at wages of $5 to $7 a day, lodging and board thrown in.